


Soil

by orphan_account



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24288781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After the events of Deepground, Reeve finally makes time.
Relationships: Tseng & Reeve Tuesti
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Soil

**Author's Note:**

> His father's time of death was based on the fact of seeing both he and Ruvie at Honeybee Inn in the OGC. This headcanon was changed a while back, and now they no longer feature in the Remake. But I will leave it in for now.

Reeve navigated a path past Midgar, pausing outside the destroyed city, the still tortured ruins as far as his eyes could see. It was just as damaged as the last time he had been here. Shalua had found her final resting place there, a homing beacon Reeve was unsure he could ever ignore; blinking away a reminder, under the ground. Where there was no soil. With a slump of his shoulders, he tucked hands into his coat pocket close against his own body. This was not what he had come to do, and so he moved onwards, traipsing a briskly huddled trail around the circumference in a Northerly direction. 

It remained in the remains the City that he had created, had maintained, had cherished as part of his own. Reeve wonders briefly as he scans the now green field distance how Shelke could find the place such a calling. Then again, he supposed, Midgar had not been part of her as it had him. If her new digital world ever saw such death and destruction, partly at her own hands, he was quite sure she would not be so persistent in retracing her paths back to such painful reminders.

A very long time walking and he could now see the City of Junon far out in the distance, a still greying lip to the blue sea beyond. Too far left, he realises and shrugs himself back to the path he needed to take. The wind bit as he pulled the long blue overcoat around him and settled deeper into the folds. Reeve cannot remember it being so cold, but then the extremes of weather - earthquakes, tidal waves, temperature shifts and winds - had only recently come to pass. Since Meteorfall. Reeve can recall in the far recesses of his mind reading a book of Bugenhagen’s that mentioned the phenomena, a giant Meteor no doubt had had its toll upon the further reaches of Gaia’s atmosphere. A global warming if he remembered rightly; but then, he was no cosmologist, and the thin, whipping air around him felt so very distant to the concept of _warm_ that it made him chuckle, hollow and almost as chilled.

Head bowed, rarely lifted except to check the scenery for markers consigned to long past memory, Reeve continued stoic upon his long journey. Finally, he came to what he had journeyed all this distance towards: a house; a decrepit marriage of stone and wood that was covered in the green, choking life of the planet. _Home._ The only location Reeve could deign with that title anymore. Pushing open the rusted wooden gate that creaked in protest in its forgotten use, he made his way into the backyard; a great patch of land, dotted with the remains of a wooden plate city and sea of soil that lay beyond.

It was to this peat of the Planet he moved, sinking to his knees in the mud, digging fingers up to his knuckles and raking fistfuls of dirt back under nails. The smell was strong, earthen and cathartic. He lets out a small choked sound and shakes his head at the figure that had appeared at his side, though his head was still bowed and unseeing. Reeve had suspected he had been followed, but he did not know the other had even known of this place. Then again, the Turks always had their methods.

“Reeve…” Just his name, yet a question all the same. He tucks in his chin against his chest, a nod shortened by flesh and bone. The soil crumbles between his fingers as he answers, “Just finishing something I should’ve done a long time ago.”

He had never got chance to mourn either parent. Too busy minimising tragedy. Too busy playing politics. Too busy being a spy. His Da had passed away somewhere around the time AVALANCHE sabotaged Reactor 1. He had never been told the precise date. His Ma, succumbed to the stigma protecting another little boy from Meteor. They too had both been buried in that City of his; hemmed walls, concreted tombed and silent forever more. He had paused earlier outside of Midgar, yet had moved on.

Reeve pulled the soil to his face and inhaled, the scent so close now it enclosed all other senses; protective, planetary, the smell of home. Opening his eyes he leaned his head back then; hazel shaded a brighter set of peridot settling a vaguely glistened gaze upon the other man, “I told Denzel my Mother was trying to grow vegetables, like old folk from the country… you know what he said to me?”

Dropping the soil to its own resting place, Reeve unbent his knees and stood, patted his hands upon his thighs, a placid smile formed, “She wanted to grow flowers.”


End file.
